April 19, 2018

The Trouble with Russianology

The Trouble with Russianology

The chief feature of Russianology is the inability to criticize Putin directly and significantly for fear of losing access to establishment policy-makers and even visas to Russia.

I had a blog post up on Minding Russia criticizing point-by-point another post by Mark Galeotti. It was ultimately about the problem of Sovietology and Russianology - the belief that Putin has evolved in his ideology or interests; that there are interest groups within Russia that have influence over him; that the West's actions in condemnation or sanctions influence Putin; that Putin can even be persuaded by former Soviet republic leaders to change his behaviour. I view all of this as untrue, and all of it a function of establishment thinking that is predicated on the need to affirm "rational behaviour" on the Russian leader's side and concede the other superpower's "legitimate interests" and the belief that America can fix things - not just exceptionalism but efficacy.

As I indicated in the post, I think we're in for a very different ride than Galeotti indicates, that Putin is bad and will grow worse, and this is inherent and unchangeable and there is little we can do but mount a credible deterrence and work toward a better day. I view Sovietology/Russianology profoundly ill-equipped, even crippled and poisoned in its inability to debate and provide real policy options given this terrible challenge because of the exigencies I mentioned above: a) the need to appeal to the establishment which is generally pro-Kremlin or "International Relations Realist" school and pragmatic and b) the literal need to keep visa access and access to elites in Moscow to retain credibility as a Russianologist -- the Valdai invitation problem as well.

At the end of this essay, I indicated that Putin will do worse things than even having created the climate that made MH17 possible and yet the West will still concede it "needs" Putin; I then pointed out that Putin is now "worse than Hitler and Stalin" in having committed his own mass crimes against humanity (Chechnya and Ukraine) and aided Assad's mass crimes against humanity in Syria. I was thinking about the mass murders in total from all of these areas (one could likely add the 2008 Georgian war) and the massive amount of displacement and destruction. In any event, this comment about Putin's "tallies" was hardly the main point of the piece; it was just a moral coda to express how bad Putin is, not only at home but abroad.

Along comes Casey Michel then -- deliberately crossing the street to pick a bone -- and picks on a technical error in my original claim. Leaving aside that my context was obviously Russia/Eurasia/Europe (it's my Minding Russia blog) and that was really what I had in mind, he pointed out that Pol Pot had committed more murders than Assad. Therefore there was a factual error. His purpose was to ensnarl me in studying non-essentials and steer away from the main point -- WHICH IS CRITICISM OF PUTIN, AND HIS INABILITY TO CRITICIZE PUTIN DIRECTLY, BUT ONLY ENGAGE IN SLEIGHT OF HAND.

And of course, he got a windfall there because not only was there a mistake in the blog, in trying to explain it and correct it, *another* mistake was introduced, which of course could give this troll endless glee. No matter, because in the end, his inability to condemn Putin is what shines here.

The mistake happened as follows: in examining the figures for Pol Pot, I said to myself, oh, right, because Pol Pot has 1-3 million and Assad had less -- and then in making this statement, I made a mistake -- I wrote in my blog comments that Assad had "one million". What I should have written (and certainly knew about, having spent YEARS working on Sudan and Chad at the UN) was the "100,000" but surprisingly, I did mix these figures up. I can remember indeed when NGOs at the UN reported 80,000 -- and then how this rapidly increased and today more than doubled. So the "official" number is now 170,000, but others put it higher at 200,000 or more -- and today the UN is warning us that it will be reporting far more than 200,000 soon. Counting deaths isn't a science, and people wrangle over these things endlessly. But the bottom line is, sure, Pol Pot is more of a mass murderer than Assad.

Of course, by now, we're quite far away from the point of not only my essay, but the problem with Putin -- that he is himself a mass murderer and is abetting one, and the entire Putin toll of all deaths for which he is responsible were then more alarmingly close to Pol Pot, although Pol Pot still takes pride of place.

But because I made the mistake of the "one million" on *my blog comment, which is already a comment on a comment, and non-essential," Michel was able to keep hammering on this through many tweets, and keep trolling. I truly marvelled at the ability of someone to evade the demand to pronounce on Putin, and in tweet after tweet, keep focusing on non-essentials. And that's no accident, comrades.

And I think this will be demonstrated in due course. Certainly Assad has caused massively more internal displacement and refugees - 9 million - compared to Darfur which was more like 2-3 million, with 200,000-300,000 killed -- note the huge gap in estimates by the UN -- a whole story in itself.

Creepy, huh? "My readers are waiting breathlessly and anxiously for me to make a correction" -- er...on a comment to a comment where it says erroneously "1 million" instead of "100,000" or "170,000". They're waiting me to ADMIT -- because it's such a breach and such an oversight! -- that Pol Pot was worse than Assad and then distract from Putin. The world must stop, and this blog must be fixed from this gross error! Well, sure.

This is about playing the victim, and pretending that I've grossly misunderstood Michel, and called him pro-Putin, when in fact (he's being ironic here), he's got "all these" anti-Putin pieces. But -- nonsense. Criticism of Orban, imitating Putin or meeting with Putin, is NOT the same thing as direct criticism of Putin. So, why can't Michel directly criticize Putin?

No, because the lower number for Sudan is 200,000, and the higher number for Syria is 200,000 so they really are comparable and with displacement/refugees, Syria is the far worse mass crime. Merely looking at deaths is not enough. Why this should require arguing is beyond me -- but it's also a problem of the inability of people like this to concede Putin's monstrosity.

Actually, no. I was writing *about Putin* and not Assad. I was totally up all of Putin's crimes AND noting that as he aided Assad, that really boosted his own numbers because he's very much responsible for Assad, arming him and providing political cover. I said *Putin* was the worst since Hitler and Stalin because he had his own crimes added to Assad's crimes. Of course, as we know Pol Pot is worse, and Bashir is very close behind Pol Pot, so sure, Putin isn't as bad as those two world-class mass murderers. Casey Michel wants to make sure Putin is exonerated -- period. So he is trolling on this point to try to tangle me up endlessly in numbers games around mass deaths of various figures -- instead of conceding the larger point - Putin is responsible for mass crimes against humanity. Finally, I then never said any deaths were in "the millions" -- I wrote "one million" as can be seen on my blog comment, which I left standing.

This insidious little trolly comment is meant to say only one thing: "I'm right, and you're wrong, and you were forced to correct something because I said so." Except...on the bigger moral question of criticizing Putin's crimes, Michel is still, well, MIA.

Just for the record, his name does have a typo on *one instance*. Every other instance it's correct, and of course, how could it be wrong when you can see his name right on Twitter and we all know how it's spelled!

And...crickets. And block. Casey Michel once again - and there have been many such interchanges -- proves to us that he can't criticize Putin. That he will get endlessly lost in non-essentials, even if factually correct, to KEEP DISTRACTING from the main point: that Putin is responsible for mass crimes against humanity, in the Caucasus at home with Chechnya and one could likely argue with Dagestn; in Ukraine, certainly, with Crimea and the Donbass, and by propping up Assad in Syria with $1 billion weapons and with political cover. Taken together, the deaths for which Putin is responsible personally mount to at least 200,000 for Chechnya, more in Dagestan, then some 3000 in Ukraine, and now over 200,000 in Syria